Finn had undergone extensive testing after his defection, physical as well as mental, until the Resistance was satisfied that there was nothing buried under his skin or hidden in his mind that might lead him to betray the cause. At the time he'd hated it, resented it and then told himself not to resent it in equal measure. Now, well - he still hated it, that was for sure, and thought he was right to do so, but he also found himself wishing that they'd looked a little more thoroughly.

A mental kill switch. It seemed impossible, but Finn knew not to doubt the First Order's malice or the General's knowledge of their methods. And besides, he'd shaken the conditioning, or so he thought. How could he be sure no one had said the kill switch in front of him? He might not remember if they had. Maybe that was why - why he'd escaped. Why, when he thought back, he couldn't quite remember...

Finn shook his head and refocusing on the issue at hand. He was two hours out of Arkanis. He'd need at least a week to establish his cover, to learn to move on a new planet without arousing suspicion. He had a language to review, customs to memorize, a game plan to put in place: he didn't have time to worry about the overall implications of having been a stormtrooper, or what might happen to him next.

Of course, his face was infamous with the First Order, so when he landed as the precious metals merchant Jani he had a carefully constructed, multi-layered, undetectable holoskin overlaying his normal features. He hired locals to set up his shop, and forty-eight hours later had an office that would pass casual inspection, with minerals on display in an ostentatiously spacious room. He'd need to project an aura of wealth if he wanted to be invited to high society events, and he'd need to be invited to high society events if he wanted to find the kill switch.

He first had the dream during his third night on Arkanis. Sleeping on a planet with two artificial suns and a subterranean motor that hummed in even the tallest buildings was no mean feat; this was the first night he'd managed to fall asleep deeply enough to dream at all. At first, he thought it was a normal semi-nightmare. He was in his stormtrooper underthings, the black fabric clinging to sweaty skin. The desert landscape around him wasn't quite Jakku, but it wasn't not Jakku, either. At any moment, Phasma would probably appear to kick the shit out of him.

"This is where you come when you wield the Force in your sleep? Really?"

Finn whirled around. Kylo Ren stood a few meters away, distaste in his expression. He wore clothes like his father, Finn saw, Resistance orange and grey with a fatigued brown jacket.

Hoping it wasn't a true dream, Finn waved a hand at him and said, "I'm not sure what my subconscious is trying to tell me with all of that."

Kylo glanced down at himself and turned that bright red Finn now found so familiar.

Oh, no. "Not my subconscious?"

"I couldn't keep wearing my uniform. I was informed it frightened the pilots."

Finn snorted. "Poe pulled a blaster on you, didn't he?"

Kylo's lips twitched. The expression was halfway between a sneer and a smile, and of course Finn felt himself warming to it instantly. "Not quite."

"Wish I could've seen it."

"No, you don't."

Dream logic wasn't as easy to manage as its normal counterpart. Finn only then remembered how he'd left Kylo, or how Kylo had left him: well-kissed, thoroughly insulted. "Oh. Right. Well."

"I wasn't focusing on you." Kylo said it so defensively that in an even slightly different context, Finn might have laughed. "I was trying to meditate."

"And yet, here you are."

"Maybe you were focusing on me!"

"I was just trying to sleep."

They glared at each other for a minute, Finn's heart pounding. Three bright red rose petals appeared from nowhere and drifted gracefully to the ground between them. When Finn looked down, he saw the sand shift and disappear, replaced by warm wood floors. He looked up past Kylo and saw a fire; he looked to his right and saw a bed.

Yikes, Finn thought. "Um."

"This is your dream." He was trying so hard to sound cold, and not quite succeeding. Finn thought if he walked over that he'd find a similarly rapid heartbeat in Kylo's chest, warmth on his cheeks, a gasp ready to escape his throat as Finn leaned in and -

Kylo stepped away, and Finn realized his dream had carried him forward to satisfy the fantasy. "Ah, kriff. Sorry."

"Are you?"

"I'm not some Sith master or whatever you are. I'm not exactly an expert at dream sharing."

"The Knights of Ren aren't Sith."

"Sure, whatever you say. I don't care, though."

"You -" Kylo spun away, stalked back towards the fire. "You are completely. Maddening."

"You could leave." Well, Finn was pretty sure he could, anyway.

Kylo laughed. It wasn't a good noise; it was harsh and angry, almost frightening in its hostility. "I could, couldn't I."

"Why don't you?"

"Nearly everyone on the base hates me."

They were right to.

"I know." Finn started, but Kylo didn't seem to realize Finn hadn't actually spoken. "I know they do, and I hate them too, so that's fine. But you talk to me. And you're annoying, and dense, and -"

"I get it, you don't like me."

Kylo glanced to the side, at Finn. His eyes flicked up and down Finn's body, and then he looked away, at the far wall, his gaze determinedly fixed way above the bed. "You talk to me," he said again, more quietly this time.

The bed was of a sort Finn had never slept on, even undercover. It had a huge, high mattress, fluffy pillows, and a gorgeously embroidered coverlet. He wanted to sink into it with Kylo, to get his mouth on him, see if he could make him fall apart. He burned for it, even in this stupid dream, even with the real Kylo half a galaxy away.

Everything about this was a bad idea. Finn closed his eyes and focused, and the warm room faded away, replaced by a smooth grey enclosure that resembled a First Order hangar.

"You should go," he heard himself say.

He didn't open his eyes, and Kylo didn't say anything else. Eventually, the dream faded; Kylo didn't interrupt the next one.

-

Arkanis high society was full of First Order sympathizers.

It made sense, a fact that Finn told himself over and over until the knowledge stopped hurting so much. Senator Sindian was from Arkanis, after all, and plenty of the Outer Rim planets were gripped by avarice and the commonly held conviction that if they fell in with the First Order, they'd be given all the wealth and power that the First Order meant to take from the Republic.

He understood them: that didn't make it easy. He lost sleep; he clenched his hands into fists to keep from shouting; he barricaded himself in his quarters and let himself cry until he was capable of lying again. The first two weeks were the worst; after that, he'd gotten used to locking it all down as he sold his fictitious goods and scooped up invite after invite to rich, evil parties.

He had to search so many swanky apartments, fool so many recording devices into forgetting he'd ever been there. He did his best not to think about what was waiting for him on Yavin 4, the weird stuff with Kylo or the stormtrooper kill switch, but every time he went to one of the yay-First-Order parties it got a little harder.

Finally, two months in, he found the files. 'Stormtrooper Conditioning and Psychological Normalization' was the title of the report, and he only had to read three pages to see evidence for the kill switch. He could've stuck around, searched this docking officer's room a little more, tried to find more information, but -

Two months of dreamless sleep that didn't actually help him heal. Two months of choking fear in his throat, wearing a false face, lying to literally everyone he met.

No. He couldn't stay. He reserved a slot to go off-world and made it to hyperspace before his next dinner.

In the end, the only thing that saved him was his radio. He'd programmed it to listen to some First Order frequencies awhile ago, less because he thought he'd actually need it, and more because it gave him peace of mind.

Finn didn't even need to think to process the commands he heard on Band C. At least four battalions, maybe as many as six, were about to descend on Yavin 4.

He'd been trained for this, albeit in the opposite direction; he didn't hesitate for longer than it took cold awareness to wash over him. He called in the mayday commands to HQ on the ground, and moved into defensive maneuvers.

They fought. It never felt real. One, two, three ships went up in blasts of debris, and Finn manned his gunner and did his best to stay alive.

His legs shook when he got out of the cockpit hours later. He felt simultaneously far away from his body and too close; he felt sweat dripping down the middle of his back, but everything people said to him seemed to be coming from down a long tunnel.

Back-slaps, congratulations, a few sympathetic looks from the pilots. Poe offered him bioluminescent green whiskey, but he found himself shaking his head, walking to the perimeter of the crowd.

Later, he received his summons to be debriefed. When he got to the command room, he initially thought it was empty. The room was dark, the normal proliferation of glowing lights having been dimmed. It wasn't until the shadow in the corner said, "Why are you here," that he realized it was a person.

The flat tone couldn't belong to anyone else. "I was summoned," he told Kylo. "Why are you here?"

A shift in the shadows: Kylo Ren was squirming under Finn's inspection. "I fought on the ground," he said. "Apparently that requires a full military debrief, and perhaps a reprimand. Maybe I'll be thrown in prison, and you can be my guard again."

"It's messed up that you sound like you're looking forward to that," Finn told him.

Kylo huffed. A moment later, Poe and the General entered the room. Poe had on his work face, all determined angles and giving absolutely nothing away. The General, on the other hand, looked furious.

She said, "Please raise the lighting level in here." The newly harsh light made Finn wince. He saw Kylo, paler even than usual, turn so his mother was no longer in his line of vision.

"Don't. You. Dare," the General said, and suddenly Finn understood Poe's carefully blank mien.

"I don't know what you mean," Kylo said, still so flat that Finn knew he was hiding some kind of upset.

"Oh, you do," the General said. "You always do."

And then they were off.

"How could you!" the General shouted. "When you know Snoke is looking for you! When you know how dangerous it is! What if you'd been caught?"

"I couldn't just sit there!" Kylo shouted back. "Do you have any idea how close it brings me to the edge, just sitting there, doing nothing, you don't, you've never understood, you never -"

"I am his daughter!" the General roared. "Of course I understand!"

Eventually, Poe got between the two of them. "Ben, stop it," he said, and then, "General, let's go - over here." It seemed to Finn that the air between the two of them was a few breaths away from lighting up in sparks. He watched as the General allowed herself to be led, her hands still clenched in fists, shaking from head to toe.

He didn't mean to end up standing next to Kylo. He was just trying to move where he might be useful, and if Poe was exerting some kind of calming influence on General Organa, it made sense that someone should be in range to grab Kylo in case he decided to do something stupid.

Which, of course, he did. "You don't care," he told the General. "You never cared. You like to think you do but you never, ever did. You're more like him than you want to be, and you're not even brave enough to commit to it."

It would have been less terrifying if the General had exploded then, tried to hit Kylo or kicked him off the planet. She only went very quiet, very still, her eyes bright on Kylo's face. For a moment, the air was so still that it seemed to take on weight.

Power. It filled the room, eddying around the General as the wind might around a mountain. Finn held his breath and dug his fingernails into his palm.

"Leia?"

They all turned at once to see Luke in the doorway. The General's expression shifted, almost crumpling as she said, "Luke, I don't - he -"

"I know." Luke didn't so much as glance at Kylo. He went straight to his sister, hugging her.

Poe glanced at Finn, one of those war-teamwork looks that Finn interpreted without needing to think about it. He grabbed Kylo's arm and tugged him out of the room. Poe hung back - to report, Finn assumed, but he'd ask later. Right now, he needed to get Kylo down the hallway, far enough away that -

"You're a bigger idiot than my fool mother. In a sense, it's impressive."

- no one could hear either of them yell.

Too late. Finn settled for the second best option, and shoved Kylo into the nearest small room.

"The General's brilliant," Finn said. "A legend. Everyone loves her. It's too bad you didn't take after her."

He saw the successful hit in the way Kylo flinched and looked away. But of course, that just made him madder, because: "Do you have any idea what I'd give for a family like that?"

Kylo mustered up a half-impressive sneer. "This isn't really about you, FN-2187."

"Don't call me that," Finn snapped, "and don't interrupt. Any of my siblings - teammates - any of the FN squad would. Any of the stormtroopers, probably half the officers, plenty of orphans that Snoke created, we'd all kill for people who love us enough to yell at us when we scare them. And you just push it away. Is Snoke back in your head, or are you just a pathological asshole?"

He stopped then because he had to, he had to; if he kept going he'd horrify both of them by talking about his childhood loneliness, or the time his sim-training had him shoot an entire family dead, one after the other, and how he'd done it and felt cold afterwards, because he didn't remember his own family; he had no idea if his mother would shield him, or even what she looked like. They had told him she'd given him away.

The worst of it was, he ought to hate Kylo for rejecting his family, for his selfishness and deliberate obtuseness. Instead he felt frantic to make him understand. He wanted to reach out, touch Kylo, fix things.

Kiss him, too. He was in so much trouble.

"What if I can't tell you?" Kylo took a step forward. Finn didn't, couldn't, move. "What if I'm not sure, or I don't want to be sure? Or what if it's both?"

He shouldn't answer. Every word was quiet poison, and meant to be too. But - "Welcome to being a person. It doesn't excuse acting like having family that cares about you is just, what, a huge imposition or something."

Kylo took another step forward, and Finn again failed to move away, or push him, or do anything useful at all. "I think Rey would die for you. Dameron, too."

"What does that have to do with -"

"And if you keep training with her, my mother might, too." Kylo's eyes looked as black as a pit of building tar. "And then Skywalker as well, of course. What should I do, then? Do you think I'll kill you?"

"Oh, come on," Finn said. "Of course not."

Whatever Kylo had been expecting, it wasn't that. His expression grew even stiffer as he said, "I might. If I was influenced by Snoke. I killed -"

"Children," Finn said. "Yeah, I heard. You sleep well at night, remembering that?"

Kylo didn't so much as twitch. Maybe he did, Finn thought; or maybe he'd just learned to lie so well that he hid the worst of it even from himself. Maybe he'd also been reconditioned, put in a room and...

It faded again, which of course was the point. "I changed my mind, I don't care," he said. "Stop being such a jerk to your mother, or I'll tell Chewbacca, and he'll hit you so hard you're laid up for the rest of the war."

"Maybe I don't want to fight the First Order."

They were so close that Finn could feel the heat radiating off Kylo, and see the sweat on his brow. "You just did. Like, six hours ago."

Caught, Kylo could do nothing but snarl. Finn surprised them both by laughing, a harsh bark of mostly-humor, twisting so that he could move out from between Kylo and the wall.

He had some time alone after that, thankfully. The General's influence was still in the back of his mind, so he meditated, slipping into the Force and doing his best not to think about Kylo, or anything else that might make his dreams true.

He dreamed of meadows and cool mountains and peace.

-

Rey chased him down as soon as his next shift ended. "You won't believe the gossip I've been hearing."

Finn blinked at her, momentarily completely at a loss. "Oh?"

"Apparently, Kylo Ren's been going around apologizing to people, and you're the reason why." Rey took a bite of snackfruit and added, mouth half-full, "Jess thinks it's a trap, but she's not spent much time with you, or she'd understand."

"Understand what?"

"You know, you're very persuasive. Like the General."

Finn could almost feel the Force eddying around him at that. He scowled. "I'm not - like that."

"Hmm." Rey shrugged. "Well, it's nice. I was in the middle of the melee with a lightsaber, and I've hardly been mentioned, given everything else there is to talk about."

Finn had never been so glad to have been taught stoicism. "People haven't been saying much about me, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, it's mostly about Ky- Ren. And his apology. Not - me."

Rey did a thing with her face sometimes where she looked like she was just barely repressing a laugh. It made Finn want to laugh with her, normally; right now, he could only answer it with a scowl. "Rey..."

"Oh, fine," Rey said. "No, they talked about you too. Half of HQ knows you better than him, or knows of you in the very least. Of course they talked about you."

"That's really not what I was hoping to hear."

"Rough luck. Someone called me 'Jedi' the other day. Not even my name. They knew Master Luke's, of course."

"See, when you say it like that it just sounds glamorous."

"It's not, I promise. I -" She bit her lip. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Sure."

"I keep having dreams where I become him."

"Who, Skywalker?"

"No, silly. Kylo Ren. With all the murder, and the evil."

"No way. You could never."

"There's no way to be sure, though. That's what Luke says."

The General had said similar, when training him. Finn could see it of himself; he'd trained as a stormtrooper, after all. Rey, though? "You would never. Not in a hundred years."

Rey had gotten too good at Jedi empathy. She narrowed her eyes at Finn and said, "You wouldn't either, of course."

Finn hesitated a breath too long.

"Finn! You can't possibly think you're prone to evil that I'm not."

Finn tried and failed to think of something to say that didn't rely on admitting he had sympathized with Kylo more than once, almost automatically, even as he was furious with him. "I think that being trained by the First Order kind of warps you. Permanently, probably."

"And being raised by junkers on Jakku doesn't?"

"That's different."

"I wouldn't say it's better, though. Plutt used to beat me, when I was still young enough to beg for more portions."

Rey said stuff like that, casual and open, and Finn knew it was a way of making connections and extending sympathy, but he still flinched and moved away a little. Her expression fell, and she reached out to touch the back of his hand, radiating apology. "I didn't mean to - I'm sorry. We both have some stuff like that."

"Rough edges. Yeah."

"I don't think you could ever be anything like him. So I suppose I have to accept that you think that of me, too."

Only one of us has kissed him! Finn wanted to yell. But of course he didn't, saying only, "Yeah. Bump on it?"

They gently bopped knuckles, and Rey said, "Anyway, Master Luke wants me to tell you that you're welcome to come do saber work with us. I told him you probably wouldn't."

"I know how to use a blaster, and several kinds of blade," Finn said. "I don't really want to do the Jedi-y stuff that makes a saber worth it."

Rey blinked. "What stuff?"

"You know, the Force manipulation, the kyber, all that."

"How do you know about that?"

"It's in the First Order's archives. Everyone with access to the Empire's data will know."

Rey frowned, and it occurred to Finn that maybe that was a stormtrooper-y thing to know. Great. "Anyway. Thanks, though?"

She hugged him, pressing cold fingertips into the back of his neck. "You're a really good friend, Finn," she said.

He grinned. "You only think that because I was your first friend."

"Don't be silly; that was BB-8."

Rey laughed long and heartily at Finn's squawk of indignation.

-

A day later, Kylo was put back in his cell under surveillance again, and the General chose Finn to be his alpha shift guard. Since Finn would have rather died than said, "Ma'am, I can't watch your son because I keep thinking about how I kissed him," he agreed to the appointment.

And then almost died in embarrassment when the General said, with a lingering frown, "If he behaves inappropriately - dream-sharing, or otherwise - please let me know, and we'll pull you off. I trust your understanding of the Force, and you have very good instincts, but that doesn't mean you have to do this."

She was too nice, and Finn was a total, complete disaster. The only good thing about it was that spending time with Kylo meant he got to see just how much it was bothering Kylo, too.

"Snoke doesn't have a hold on me again."

"That's what the scans say," Finn said, "but the last time you successfully lied about him having a hold on you, you also did a massacre. So."

"And of all people, they think you could stop me?"

"No," Finn said. He was going to elaborate, but he wasn't sure he wanted Kylo to know about Finn training with his mother, or about what Finn's own talents were. Supposedly. Mostly right now they manifested themselves as unsettling dreams and weird vibes in the cafeteria.

"My mother thinks so, though. She thinks you have empathic abilities of historic proportions. A true child of hers in ability."

"Sure. I mean, she has shields that are so strong I don't think I could get past them even if I took Luke Skywalker up on the training offer, but I'm sure you're right and you got all that off her the last time she came in here."

He realized too late that he'd let Ren manipulate him right into revealing too much.

"So it's true. He does want to train you."

"He just offered because Rey -"

"They've both found such creative ways to replace me."

"Wow. You're really paranoid, huh?" And then it clicked. "You're sure you're not under Snoke's influence?"

He hadn't realized Kylo was even flushed until his face drained of blood. He stared at Finn, nostrils flaring, knuckles white where he gripped his knees.

Finn was pretty sure that anything he said would be poorly received, and might actually end in Kylo trying to break out of the prison and - kill him? He hoped they weren't at the point where Kylo would do that, but then again...

Then again, Kylo seemed to be realizing what Finn had already seen: Snoke's influence clung to him like cobwebs on old wood.

"You should just leave. It'll fade again."

"Yeah, that's kind of why I'm here."

"Why you were told to be here."

Finn turned those words over in his head. He didn't understand why Kylo sounded so bitter; he settled on saying, "Yes, I'm under orders. I mean, obviously. I'm part of the Resistance, so." Now he was babbling. He clicked his mouth shut.

"Ugh, fine." Apparently, that was the end of it; Kylo stared into space after that, willfully ignoring Finn. Finn spent the next three hours going over flight drills in his head, and gave an incredibly uneventful report to his relief officer.

If he'd thought about it ahead of time, he might have said he'd be surprised to see Kylo in his dreams that night. During the dream, though, he didn't feel surprised at all. He came across Kylo sitting under a copse of trees, staring out at the rolling landscape of a cool, pastoral planet that Finn didn't quite recognize. Kylo said, "You should."

"What?"

"Recognize it. This is your dream."

"You really love telling me that, huh." Finn sat down next to him. "I've seen all sorts of planets. Did you know there's a whole class of planets with mixed climates?" When Kylo didn't answer, Finn sighed. "Of course you did, you traveled all over with them."

"Them." More bitterness. "You can't even hold the thought in your mind, can you?"

"You tell me. This is real, isn't it? You're you. Which means you're crazy powerful."

"The Force brought me here, but my own abilities are muted. You should really learn more about this kind of thing. Dream-influencing is central to the General's abilities."

"I thought it was influence in general."

"We're never so vulnerable as when we dream."

Finn very deliberately didn't ask Kylo what his mother had said in his dreams - or if he was sure it had been her. "Well, I'm tired," he said. "So don't try to choke me out, or whatever."

Kylo moved in a blur of dark clothing. Finn's heart leaped in his throat, but no hand - physical or the Force - went around his neck. Instead, Kylo hovered over him, not quite in his lap, not quite forcing Finn's head back against the tree. He was breathing too quickly, his nostrils flared, and he looked -

"Wow," Finn said. "You look awful."

For an odd moment, suspended the way only a dream could be, Finn thought that Kylo might crumble. His mind began racing down the path of what he'd do if Kylo started crying - apologize? He didn't think he needed to. Try to end the dream? That was probably an overreaction. But what else could he do?

He didn't get the chance to do anything. Kylo kissed him.

It was a bad kiss, desperate and wet in the wrong places, and Finn didn't quite understand how Kylo's grasping fingers could be so uncomfortable when none of this was even real. And, too, there was the moment when they broke apart and Kylo gasped, deep and shaking his own chest, half sobbing. Finn's head spun to see it, he wanted - he wanted, a little, to berate Kylo, to tell him to pull it together. He wanted to sink to his knees. He wanted to know, for once, what he was doing, and why he was doing it, before he actually acted.

But he only said, "More?"

"More," Kylo agreed in a choked-off voice, and then he was the one sinking to his knees, pulling Finn's loose pants down, mouthing at his cock.

It wasn't real. But it didn't feel like a dream. Kylo's fingers bit into Finn's thighs, and he looked up at Finn with frightening intensity as he sucked the head of Finn's cock into his mouth. There was a moment, too, when Finn's hand stiffened against Kylo's head -

He was so close, oh, so unbearably close, and trying desperately not to be rude -

And his hips were slammed against the tree by an invisible force, by the Force, and he came down Kylo's throat with a shout, his fingers curling in despite himself -

He watched as his curled fingers tugged Kylo's head back, so that the last of his come landed on Kylo's face, his chin, his lips. He was still all angular and exhausted looking, still nothing Finn thought he should want. But as he stayed kneeling, pulling his own cock out and getting himself off with a few too-quick tugs, Finn discovered that he couldn't look away.

Every movement of his expression, every breath, the way he licked his lips, the thin film of tears over his eyes when he looked up at Finn: all of it, together and separately, made Finn want to kiss him, hold him close, keep him. He definitely wasn't going to get that last bit, not when they could only do this in a dream, and not when it was kind of weird and awkward even there. But he could have a kiss, and so he took one, sinking to his knees and holding the back of Kylo's head as they kissed.

Kylo moved into it like he'd never wanted to do anything else. It was somehow both terrifying and the hottest thing Finn had ever experienced. Finn reached down to touch him, found him hard and aching for it, his need reverberating in Finn's mind. He sobbed into Finn's mouth when he came, and Finn held him through it, kissed him over and over, his lips, his cheeks, his jaw.

Time faded then. The dream became more of a dream: shifting landscapes, reality blinking in and out of existence. Finn thought he and Kylo might have briefly shared a bed, but later, awake, he wasn't sure. He remembered stroking a thumb over Kylo's cheek and saying, "You need to forgive yourself so you can get to work fixing things."

He remembered Kylo laughing, loud, bitter.

When he woke up, he registered bone-deep exhaustion before anything else. It took him until he got to the cafeteria, after using the 'fresher and doing his morning stretches, before he really remembered the previous night. And then -

Oh, no. Yikes. He'd - oh boy. This was a way bigger problem than anything he'd done with the other FNs.

His first instinct was to talk to someone about it, but on the heels of that was the obvious fact that he couldn't tell anyone. What would he say? "Hey, Rey, so I kissed Kylo Ren awhile back, and we keep meeting up in dreams, and last night I'm pretty sure I popped his dream-cherry?" No. She'd probably stab him and she'd be right to.

Luke and Leia, being related to Kylo, were right out. He couldn't imagine Poe really understanding - or worse, he'd understand all too well, and then Finn would have to think about who exactly Ben Organa was before he went evil. BB-8 would just whistle angrily at him, and also Finn wasn't sure it was old enough to even know about sex, and he wasn't ready to find out how droids aged just so he could have a confidant.

He had no one to talk to this particular problem about. It was kind of sad to realize, but then, he'd been alone so much. After the first reconditioning, as everyone else had cried in the bunks -

Anyway, the best course of action was clearly to keep going with his work and do his best to forget that whole weird Force-powered interlude had ever happened. The only problem with that was, his current work was guarding Kylo.

And his next shift was right after breakfast.

"You okay?" Poe nudged him as he stared down at his oatmeal.

"Oh, yeah, sure." Finn did his best to force a smile.

Judging by Poe's half-incredulous, half-disgusted look, it didn't work too well. "Sure," Poe said. "You know you can talk to me about whatever you need to, right?"

"I really appreciate that." That, at least, was honest, even if Finn had absolutely no plans to discuss anything about his current predicament with Poe.

"Sure, buddy." Poe took a bite of his omelet. "Any time."

It was, in all, a heartwarming gesture of friendship that did absolutely nothing to make Finn feel less terrified of his upcoming shift. He finished his breakfast and drank as much caf as he thought he could bear, then took a few deep breaths, trying to center himself in the Force.

Oh, no. That just made him think of his dream-Force-sex. He was really in trouble.

He wasn't sure what he expected from Kylo. When he opened the outer cell door, he realized he never should have expected anything but this: Kylo staring into the space past Finn, not greeting him, not even looking at him.

"You know, I have to fill out evaluation forms about your behavior, so they can try to judge if you've been released from Snoke's influence."

He winced even as he said it; it was impulsive, ruder than he ever wanted to be. Kylo raised his eyebrows very slightly, but didn't so much as look at Finn. "Are you trying to imply something? Would you like me to do you a...favor...here, as well?"

"What? No!"

"Careful," Kylo said, syllables as sharp as Finn had ever heard them. "There is no part of this cell that isn't monitored for abnormalities."

Finn had, of course, known that. But he'd reacted anyway. He wasn't thinking; he was getting sloppy. All because of Kylo Ren. If it weren't so worrying and horrifying, it would be overwhelmingly embarrassing.

"My apologies," he said. "How are you feeling today?"

Kylo's eyes flicked up and down Finn's body in a way Finn could only see as deeply, upsettingly sexual. "Unsatisfied."

Finn pressed the frowny face on his holopad and read the next question. "Appetite?"

"Hungry."

The questions went on for fifteen minutes. Kylo somehow managed to make every single one of them refer to their dream. The weirdest thing was, he didn't look like he was enjoying himself. He looked mad, like this was less a joke and more a way to try to get Finn to talk to him. But what was there to talk about, even? What did he think Finn could say? 'Hey, sorry about the dream sex, on the other hand I'm pretty sure we both enjoyed it, same time tomorrow night'?

It was just a nightmare. Navigating the asteroid belt of Phasma's violent moods had been easier.

Finally, they were done, and Finn could sit down at his usual desk and try to do his reading. The General had assigned him some Old Republic philosophy on the Force, and while it was pretty easy to understand as subject matter, every other paragraph laid out ideas that would've gotten him reconditioned if he'd so much as mentioned their existence. He had to keep taking breaks to breathe and remind himself that no one here would beat him for anything, especially not reading philosophy.

"She has you reading Jehrat?"

Finn gritted his teeth and touched the page-forward on his holopad.

"He's full of bantha piss, you know."

Finn focused on the first paragraph. Presupposing an existent yet undetectable set of physical properties, the Force may be understood as that which sentient organisms are capable of sensing, through some form of interaction with the outside world, contemporaneous with movement of said physical properties. Presupposing a lot there, if anyone asked Finn. Which the General would, so he'd need to take notes.

"Nothing he has to say is even true anymore. He was a simplistic, doddering old man when he was alive, not even a real Jedi. Why are you reading him?"

"The General told me to," Finn said, a little too quickly, a little too angrily. "Look, just - do you need something to do? A book to read? A game to play?"

"The General is under the impression that amusements only help Snoke retain his hold on me, so you'd have to clear it with her first."

"Your mother is worried about you. Wait, no, you know what? I don't care. Never mind." Now let us imagine a way of detecting the Force through some physical aspect, a tool or talisman which allows -

"I'd do it again."

It was unfair and terrifying in equal measure that Kylo could be talking about either the sex or his murderous defection to the First Order. Finn honestly couldn't tell, and acknowledging that made him feel sick. Who was he, that this was the guy he'd been fooling around with?

"That's nice," he managed to say, and went back to his reading.

Well, he tried. Mostly he stared at the page and berated himself. He was curious about what Kylo thought he should read instead of Jehrat, whether Kylo had ever done the sort of persuasion the General was having him work on, what he thought of the modifications Poe had made to the X-wing gunner that Finn would be using in case of hostile engagement. He'd probably be interested in Kylo's opinions on his shoes too. He definitely wanted to ask Kylo about the kill switch - and ask him what it meant if it worked on Finn, Force powers aside.

He shouldn't want any of that, and every impulse just made him feel worse.

"Are you just really lonely, then?"

"No!"

But Kylo smirked at that; he knew he'd scored a hit. "It's okay if you are. Though I suppose I should tell you, that's how the Dark finds its way in."

"I don't care." But he did. Oh, he did. Was it loneliness? He had friends. Seriously cool people, even, badass members of the Resistance, legends in their own right, who weren't gross traitors.

"You could find anything you want from me somewhere else. I'm sure Poe would suck you off. Or Rey."

Blood rushed to his head at that. "I'm not - I don't -" See them that way. But he did see Kylo that way, ugh, there was no way he was going to admit that out loud. "Shush," he managed to say, and turned his chair around so he couldn't even see the cell anymore.

The cell had been constructed in such a way that it was impossible for Kylo to reach him with the Force. He knew that, had in fact repeatedly confirmed it with everyone from Resistance maintenance techs to the General herself. But...

But: he felt Kylo's eyes on him the whole rest of his shift, and it didn't matter how impossible that technically was.

-

Finn had his usual lesson with the General the next day. They'd extended it half an hour to allow for Kylo-related debriefs, too. Finn hadn't really thought about what he'd say until he was sitting across from the General, under her sympathetic gaze, being asked if everything was okay.

Then he found he couldn't keep a single secret. "You asked about dream sharing. I - he - he did. We did. It was - bad? No, it was private. But he's definitely, he's got a lot of problems right now, and I - messed up, I guess, I'm sorry."

The General was capable of being the most inscrutable person Finn had ever known, including all the commanders who generally wore helmets all the time. He watched as her expression stiffened, feeling dread rise in the back of his throat. "Sir?"

She shook herself a little. "You didn't do anything wrong. The only person to blame for my son's actions is my son." It sounded like something she'd had to tell herself more than once. "I do feel obligated to clarify a few things, however. You're aware that my son is under Snoke's influence currently?"

"It was in my briefs." Which she knew, of course.

"Yes. And...I apologize for asking, but did you know my son back when you were held by the First Order?"

"We all knew of him, ma'am."

The General's hands were folded on her lap. She wasn't clenching them into fists or even twisting the fabric of her pants, but Finn got the sudden, indelible impression that she desperately wanted to move. "I'm just trying to confirm this isn't some...syndrome, of some kind, from the captivity. I want you to feel free to live your life here, Finn. Date whoever you want, be - friendly with whoever you want. You're a hero, you know, and you've got a lot going for you. You should be free to experience all that life has to offer."

Sixteen kriffing Siths, Finn thought faintly, she thinks Kylo's sexually brainwashed me.

"You know, General, thank you, I - that's very helpful, that's good. But I actually am, um, I'm living, it's all fine."

"Dream sharing -"

"Intimacy! I know." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was going to have to just say it. "That's. Kind of the problem. That I know."

She was silent for a long time before saying, "I suppose the rumors about his motivation to apologize were true, then."

Finn thought he might die if he confirmed it, so he just sat there.

"Well," she said. "I did say I want you to be happy; that remains true. I won't bring it up again unless you choose to."

"Thank you," he said with feeling.

"Now, on to other matters: ske teh la ra ney puh ma."

"General?" His brain caught up. "That's the kill switch?"

"So it is." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Feel any different?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"We'll be deploying a few operatives to...test...the efficacy of it, on stormtroopers who aren't you."

"What about the prisoner?"

"Yasha has chosen to join the Resistance, and is no longer a prisoner. We tested it on her first, two days ago."

That was a relief. But - "You're sure it removed conditioning? It didn't add something else?"

"We tested her with every tool at our disposal, including using mine and my brother's talents. We're as sure as we can be."

And now the Resistance had one more really motivated fighter. No wonder they'd chosen to focus on that intel. "That's - good?"

"Indeed."

It was probably also really highly classified. "Thank you."

She nodded. "Now, to the lesson. Tell me what you thought of Jehrat."

He left a few hours later feeling wrung out, the way he always did when learning about the Force. It felt almost threatening sometimes, looming; it had the power to unmake him, and yet the General was teaching him how to channel and use that power. He knew he was right to be scared, but...

Maybe if he got good enough, he could figure out a nice, normal, non-Jedi way to be sure Kylo didn't get caught up by Snoke again.

And maybe also he could show Kylo his brand new magic and Kylo wouldn't laugh at him and mock him. Right. Keep dreaming, Finn.

It was Poe who told him about the party, by way of sending an email to his room computer. The official invite just said they'd be celebrating the Wookiee festival of the moon in three alpha shifts. Poe's note said, "Be there or be square...and possibly the one who has to kiss Chewie to celebrate." Finn laughed and sent back his 'going' right away.

At breakfast the next day, he said, "So how does the festival of the moon work?"

"I only know vague details," Poe said, "but it's for renewal, cleaning, all the good stuff. It's a happy one - we'll eat and drink and be merry."

"Will Kylo be there?"

He regretted the question when Poe looked at him like he'd asked if they could expect General Hux to be the DJ. "I'm not sure. Guess that depends on if he's still locked up; you'd know more about that than me. He might not want to deal with people who don't want him there, though."

"Wants who where?" Pava called from down the table.

"Kylo Ren, at the moon festival."

All the pilots groaned.

"Ben was annoying even when he was just Baby Ben," Pava said. "So, no thanks."

She said it without any heat, and Poe agreed with her right away, but it just - it bothered Finn, more than a little. "Hey, if he does show up, be nice?"

Poe laughed.

"I'm serious! It's my job to, you know, make sure he's doing okay in society. It's probably harder to shrug off dark side stuff if everyone's bullying you."

"To be fair, calling him a murderous asshole isn't bullying. It's not bullying if it's true."

"Poe. For me?"

For a second he thought Poe was going to call him on it; he didn't believe for a second that he wasn't being as transparent as it was possible for a person to be. He did his best to project innocence and then, when he got the feeling that wasn't going to work, patheticness.

He didn't want to talk about why he'd be upset if he saw people being rude to Kylo. He knew it was deserved. He just...he'd hate it, that was all.

"Fine," Poe said. "You're getting good at that, by the way. I could barely feel the pressure."

He went back to his breakfast like he'd mentioned the weather forecast. Finn sat there, stunned, unable to eat until the shift start bell rang.

-

Kylo hopped to his feet as soon as Finn entered the outer cell. "What happened?"

"Huh? Nothing."

"You think I can't tell when you're lying? Out with it. What. Happened?"

"I already told you, nothing happened." He couldn't quite manage to be calm about it.

But the hint of anger in his voice just made Kylo more intent. He walked forward until he stood a hair's breadth from the edge of his cell and said, "Tell me."

"No," Finn shot back. "Don't ask me again."

He'd have locked it down forever after that if Kylo had kept pressing. So of course Kylo dropped it, looking away from him and stalking back to the far end of his cell.

Finn barely made it five minutes before saying, "I just had a weird moment. I sort of - almost accidentally compelled Poe. Or made him want to do what I wanted, anyway."

"That counts as compulsion." Kylo sounded totally unruffled by the possibility. "I assume the General has prepared you for this?"

"You really don't have to call her that, you know." Finn sighed. "Sure she has. It still feels - just, I don't know. I didn't even realized I was doing it."

"The sign of a strong talent. I don't understand how we didn't find you."

"We?"

"The First Order."

It was like being tossed in a bucket of ice water, or booted out an airlock. And he'd been asking Poe to be decent to Kylo. What was wrong with him? "Yeah, I guess if you had you could've tortured me more."

"We would have elevated you, made you a member of the Knights of Ren."

"Would I have been able to see my family then? Could I have chosen a name? What about reconditioning, would I have -" He shook his head, his mind gone briefly, terrifyingly blank. "You know what, never mine. I know Snoke does a number on you, I'm not going to have this argument."

You kissed him, a nasty voice whispered in his mind.

Kylo was silent for long enough that Finn began to hope the subject had been dropped. Of course, as soon as he let himself think that might be true, Kylo said, "I'm sorry."

"Are you?" We.

"Yes. As sorry as I can be, given...everything."

"You can't blame Vader for this."

"Snoke lives in my mind, like a maggot burrowing in my brains." Kylo barked a laugh. "But as they keep reminding me, that's not a real excuse. You hid from us: well done. I commend you. When I'm out of this cell again, I might be able to help you gain awareness of your use of the Force. It was never my mother's strong suit."

It was a good apology, mostly. It also made Finn very afraid that Kylo might be free in time for the festival after all. "I'm not sure I want you to be my teacher. For - so many reasons."

Kissing. Sex. Also evil. Many, many reasons.

He wanted to disappear into the floor when Kylo's gaze drifted to his mouth. "Understandable."

The silence after that stretched on like a living thing; the smell of rotten food hanging in the air couldn't have been more prominent or irritating. Finn logged his report before leaving. He didn't say goodbye.

-

He heard the silence before he saw Kylo, and unfortunately he knew exactly what it meant.

The moon festival, per tradition, had spread into pretty much every public space on the base, and many not-quite-public spaces. Finn was in one of the latter currently, a spot that had been Poe, Pava, and Finn's barracks. Poe had somehow wheedled BB-8 into temporarily removing the walls, and now they had an almost-party-room perfect for swapping booze and all their more cheerful war stories.

Because Finn's war stories were almost universally depressing, he hadn't said much in awhile. Thus, when everyone else stopped talking, too, he noticed right away.

At the far end of the hallway, past the opened barracks, stood Kylo Ren. He stared into the distance with the kind of tortured look on his face that Finn imagined he'd wear before, oh, kissing Snoke's feet, or admitting the First Order was awful.

Finn looked over at Poe, panic at his remembered not-quite-compulsion filling him. Poe glanced at Finn, swallowed, and said, "Ben. Come sit over here. You'll like Pava's story; it's about blowing the Finalizer's sister ship to pieces."

"I don't go by Ben anymore," Kylo said coldly. But he swept down the hallway and into the room, ignoring the pilots' sidelong glances, and folded up his ridiculously long legs to sit next to Poe.

It was like Poe had decided to bring an enormous spider to sit by him. Everyone was clearly trying to be polite for Poe's sake, but they also inched away from Kylo, sending each other Looks that couldn't be ignored.

Except by Poe, apparently. "Anyway - Pava, you'd just gotten to the good part."

And maybe it was because he'd been drinking, or maybe the stress had finally precipitated a total breakdown, but Finn found himself overwhelmingly grateful for Jessika's storytelling abilities just then. She launched back into her story with gusto, describing the hack 'em slash 'em boarding style that had gotten them on the ship, and how they'd managed to pilot it to the nearest Resistance base. "We even got three new recruits - no stormtroopers, though, sorry," she added, glancing at Finn.

"Very few stormtroopers have broken the conditioning, in all the Empire's history," Kylo said.

He had to call attention to it, didn't he? Finn sighed and took an enormous drink as the other pilots smiled with obvious strain.

"I'm saying Finn is talented," Kylo added into the silence.

And then Poe, wonderful normal Poe, said, "We all knew that already, Ben. You're late to the party in more ways than one," and everyone laughed as Kylo's face turned bright red.

Finn let out a slow, relieved breath, and kept drinking.

He got up to mingle at one point, after Pava and Poe had gone off to find the doctor who "has some real dirt on Chewie's amorous habits, or so I heard", an adventure Finn supported in theory but thought he might actually die if he went on. He didn't notice, at first, that Kylo had followed him - or more honestly, he'd managed to get drunk enough that he could almost plausibly tell himself he didn't notice.

Fine. He was drunk, but he still noticed.

"You could mingle too, you know," Finn said as they walked down the hall together. It was late enough that they passed more than a few couples - and groups - tucked together in alcoves, swapping kisses. Finn did his best to ignore them. Who wanted to kiss when they were this drunk? His nose tingled. It would be weird.

"I could," Kylo said. He kept his voice quiet, so that it almost rumbled.

They were standing too close. They'd stopped, Finn realized - or he'd stopped, and Kylo had followed his lead. The thought made something in him roll over in satisfaction. Kylo should follow his lead more. "You wouldn't go evil then," Finn told him, and started walking again.

He felt like he'd unspooled a thread between them, tightly-wound and flimsy, close to snapping. Everything he said or did seemed to creep closer to some kind of reckoning, and as much as he'd have liked to blame Kylo for it, he couldn't quite get himself there. Kylo had done terrible things, unconscionable and unforgivable things - and he'd also done a lot of stuff that was just plain annoying. But he wasn't the one who kept pulling Finn into sexually charged dreams. He wasn't the one who kept reaching out, over and over again, trying to understand and trying to get closer.

No, that was all Finn. And Kylo owed him, oh, a million apologies, but Finn wasn't unselfaware enough to pretend he hadn't been taking at least one step forward for every two of Kylo's.

The night went on; the alcohol and food continued to be plentiful and in every single room. At one point Finn ran into BB-8, literally, and he thought that BB-8 might be drunk, if that was even possible for a droid. Finn definitely was. BB-8 looked over at Kylo and trilled something that Finn was ninety percent sure wasn't rude, and then rolled away and promptly crashed into a door.

It was nice. Finn hadn't realized how many people he knew on the base until they were all greeting him, handing him drinks, giving Kylo the not-quite-hostile hairy eye. It was nice, but Kylo stuck to his side all evening, until Finn had to say goodnight and stumble to his room alone and drunkenly not-think about how close he'd come to kissing Kylo, and how much he hated being alone in his room.

At dawn, as Yavin 4's three moons touched the edge of sunlight, Wookiee howls filled the air. Finn lay awake, still tipsy, trying and failing not to think about Kylo.